Journey: The November 15/16, 2020

The Big Picture

Luke-Acts As we talked about last time, Acts is the second volume to Luke’s . While Luke has a lot in common with the other Synoptic , the also has specific emphases and themes, and the author has his own writing style. We should naturally expect that some of those emphases and style will carry over into volume 2. What are some themes from Luke’s Gospel that we also see in the book of Acts? the Holy Spirit miracles discipleship, sending out the disciples baptism caring for the poor belief in Jesus’s identity the role of women (as disciples and converts: Lydia, Tabitha/, Priscilla, Mary mother of John Mark) inclusion of Gentiles fulfillment of Scripture concern for the poor martyrdom/persecution centrality of the temple and the synagogue reversals So, the book of Acts picks up where the Gospel of Luke left off and continues the story with the next generation after Jesus.

The Early Church All of our information about the first generation of the church comes from the narrative in Acts and what we can piece together from other writings. But Acts alone presents a narrative treatment of this era. Acts especially gives us geographical information about the travels of Paul. But Acts also fills in some information about the other apostles and the leadership structure in . It is because of Acts that we have some concept of how and where the church spread, how the church transitioned from Jewish to Gentile, and who some of the other leaders were in the first generation after Jesus. When we try to piece together what the church looked like in the first century, it usually involves comparing the situational details in the letters (especially Paul’s letters) with the narrative and individuals in the book of Acts. But even with that comparison, there are some significant gaps, such as the fate of many of the apostles (including Paul and Peter) and the expansion of the gospel to the east and the south. We have to rely on traditions and church histories from the following centuries to fill in those gaps.

Authorship & Date Since Acts and Luke were written by the same author, everything we discussed last time in relation to author, date, audience, style, and purpose also is relevant here. I won’t repeat all of that, but I do want to return to a couple of key issues that I mentioned last time but said I would talk about in more detail once we got to Acts. 1

The “We” Passages (:10-17; 20:5-16; 21:1-19; 27:1-28:16) As you start reading the book of Acts, it is written in the third person. That is, the narrator stands outside the story and refers to individuals as “they.” But as you read along, suddenly you run into parts written in the first person, where the narrator is now referring to people as “we.” (These passages are also complicated because they can switch back and forth within the same context, using “they” at points when we might expect “we.”) The traditional understanding of these passages is that the author was along for this part of the travels and is recounting his personal experience. But not everyone accepts that to be the only explanation for these passages. Another explanation is that Luke is making use of first-person accounts here. (Think back to his description at the beginning of his Gospel about the research he did.) In other words, it is not Luke himself who was along on the trip, but he is including the first-person accounts of someone else who was on the trip. (A more cynical explanation for these passages is that the entire book is fictional but Luke wanted the reader to think that he was a companion of Paul, so he wrote these portions in the first person.) The we passages include especially the sea journeys and Paul’s time in . This connection is why some people think that Luke wrote Acts (and maybe also the Gospel) from Rome during this time while Paul was in prison. (This is also based on the mention of Luke in Colossians and Philemon, two letters that were possibly written while Paul was imprisoned in Rome.) Any way you look at these passages, there are at least two things that are true about them. First, it is a jarring rhetorical strategy (at least, jarring to us today) for the author to suddenly switch from the third person to the first person. Second, we need to trust Luke as an author that he was aware of this change and knew what he was doing, even if we can’t fully agree on his purpose or strategy.

The Ending of Acts Another important issue that I mentioned last time, with significance for the date of Acts, is where the book ends. Paul is imprisoned in Rome, awaiting his trial before Caesar. The question is, Why would Acts end with Paul imprisoned and leave it at that? One answer is that this is where things were at historically when Luke published the book. But others think he wrote the book later and there is another explanation for the ending. One possibility is the structure of the book: the book is not about the life of Paul, it is about the geographical spread of the gospel message. The book of Acts ends with the arrival of the gospel in Rome (the “ends of the earth”—or the end of the known world). Another possibility is that the readers were already familiar with the fate of Paul, so it was not necessary to explain to them what happened next. However you understand it, Acts ends on a triumphant note that Paul has made it to Rome and continues to minister there, with his imprisonment not holding him back from preaching Jesus .

Genre The most obvious genre, or type of literature, for the book of Acts is history. But nothing is ever that simple or agreed-upon in the study of the Bible. The first question is why does genre matter? The answer is that it makes a difference in what literary rules an author employs and what expectations or understanding the original audience had based on the genre. We’ll see this more in the next section. Because of the connection between Luke and Acts, some scholars think that both should be understood as the same genre. If the Gospel of Luke is closer to a biography than a history, then Acts would be seen the same way. But not everyone makes this distinction. I will refer to Luke as history, but we also need to discern between modern history writing and ancient history writing, because they are not exactly the same. 2

Since the genre of Acts is ancient history writing, we need to evaluate the book of Acts based on that genre.

Ancient History Writing

When you read a modern history book, or when you watch a documentary, what expectations do you have of what you will read or see? We expect footage or photos of the event, direct quotations, information from people who were there, factual information.

During modernism (which many of us grew up with, at least during grade school), we expected history to be objective. Now, in postmodernism, we understand that history is always written from a specific point of view. Even the choice of whose story to tell or what materials to include presents a specific perspective. However, even for all that, we still expect history writing to be based on facts and research. We can still distinguish between a historical documentary or historical fiction. For instance, if you watch Victoria or Hamilton, you know that even though this includes some historical information, it is ultimately meant as entertainment, and so the writers will make choices about how they write scripts and present the characters that tells the story in a specific way. But we don’t have the same expectations of these as we would of a documentary.

When we read ancient histories, we need to understand that the ancient world had its own expectations of history writing, which are not necessarily the same as our expectations today. For one thing, history was not expected to be unbiased or objective. History was told from a point of view, such as a nationalist view (presenting one side of a war), or a theological view (showing how a particular god was active on behalf of his people). On the other hand, historians did recognize their own bias, at times, so they recognized the difference between offering opinions and presenting fact. Along with this, history today is often expected to be somewhat dispassionate. It is recounting the facts and evaluating why certain things happened the way they did. But ancient history writing was expected to appeal to the emotions of the reader and tell the story in a dramatic way. Greco-Roman education had a heavy focus on rhetoric and oratory, and these skills were expected to be employed in history writing as well.

Also, the contents of a history were not expected to be exact records from an original source. For example, if you picked up a modern history book and saw the Gettysburg Address or the “I Have a Dream” speech, you would expect that to be an exact, word-for-word duplication of what Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr. said on those occasions, with historical records to back that up. But in an ancient history writing, when the reader encountered a speech, they expected that it was written by the author of that work but in a style or tone that emulated what the speech giver would have said. So, for Acts, as the ancient reader came across a speech by Peter or Paul, they wouldn’t expect that Luke is reproducing a word-for-word record of what was said on that day. Rather, they would expect that Luke has written a speech similar in style and content to what Peter or Paul would have said or reportedly talked about.

However, ancient history still has some things in common with our expectations of modern history. First, it was intended to be honest and telling the truth (even if that was a specific perception of the truth). Second, as the prologue to Luke’s Gospel shows, it was expected to be researched and plausible. Eyewitness testimonies mattered, so the historian’s job was to incorporate those testimonies, not override or replace them.

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Third, just as there is a trend today to use reenactments or well-told stories to teach history, the ancients also used well-crafted narrative as a vehicle for conveying historical events.

The bottom line is that when we evaluate Acts (and other historical narrative in the Bible) as history, we need to evaluate it on its own terms. For those who want to use Acts as a source of history, in our modern understanding of historical research, that is a separate venture and should be treated as such.

Outline (Adapted from NIV Study Bible)

I. Peter and the Beginnings of the Church in the Holy Land (chs. 1–12) A. “Throughout , and ” (1:1–9:31) 1. Introduction (1:1–2) 2. Christ’s resurrection ministry (1:3–11) 3. The period of waiting for the Holy Spirit (1:12–26) 4. The filling with the Spirit (ch. 2) 5. The healing of the lame man and the resultant arrest of Peter and John (3:1–4:31) 6. The community of goods (4:32–5:11) 7. The arrest of the 12 apostles (5:12–42) 8. The choice of the Seven (6:1–7) 9. Stephen’s arrest and martyrdom (6:8–7:60) 10. The scattering of the Jerusalem believers (8:1–4) 11. Philip’s ministry (8:5–40) 12. Saul’s conversion (9:1–31) B. “As far as Phoenicia, and ” (9:32–12:25) 1. Peter’s ministry on the Mediterranean coast (9:32–11:18) 2. The new Gentile church in Antioch (11:19–30) 3. Herod’s persecution of the church and his subsequent death (ch. 12) II. Paul and the Expansion of the Church from Antioch to Rome (chs. 13–28) A. “Throughout the region of and ” (13:1–15:35) 1. Paul’s first missionary journey (chs. 13–14) 2. The Jerusalem conference (15:1–35) B. “Over to Macedonia” (15:36–21:16) 1. Paul’s second missionary journey (15:36–18:22) 2. Paul’s third missionary journey (18:23–21:16) C. “To Rome” (21:17–28:31) 1. Paul’s imprisonment in Jerusalem (21:17–23:35) 2. Paul’s imprisonment in Caesarea (chs. 24–26) 3. Voyage to Rome (27:1–28:15) 4. Two years under house arrest in Rome (28:16–31)

Structure In :8, Jesus says, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This geographical spread then becomes the structure for the book of Acts, which also makes a difference in what Luke emphasizes and which stories he follows. We tend to see the narrative in terms of the people, so we wonder why Luke abandons the story of the apostles such as Peter and Philip and narrows in on Paul, and we wonder why Luke is content to end the story once Paul arrives in Rome. But the driving force for the narrative is the fulfillment of the geographical spread that Jesus states at the beginning of the book. The point is not to follow the lives or ministries of the people who took the good

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news to those places; the point is to follow the good news to those places and see the fulfillment of Jesus’s words.

Overview & Themes: Acts 1-12

Acts 1:4-5: Baptism (John, Jesus, Spirit) Acts starts out by setting up a contrast between two types of baptism first indicated at the : the baptism of John (in water) versus the baptism of the Spirit. As the narrative progresses, another contrast will be drawn, between the baptism of John and baptism in the name of Jesus. All three of these baptisms are distinct, and the latter two are necessary for . (We also see with this the ongoing significance of the name of Jesus.) When it is discovered that people have been baptized in John’s baptism, it is necessary for them to be baptized in the name of Jesus (e.g., 19:3-5). But it is also necessary for them to be baptized by the Spirit. However, there is not a specific order in which the water baptism and Spirit baptism must happen. Even when the humans try to baptize in water first, the Spirit takes charge and moves as the Spirit will (e.g., 10:44-48).

Acts 2: & the Birth of the Church The prediction of baptism in the Spirit is first fulfilled at Pentecost, when the disciples have been waiting in Jerusalem and praying together in the upper room (1:12-14), and the Spirit descends and empowers them to speak in tongues (or, in different languages) (2:1-13). Several things come of this event. 1. This sets the tone for future examples of baptism in the Spirit. Sometimes these are accompanied by speaking in tongues, but not always. Sometimes the Spirit empowers the people to speak boldly, to prophesy, or in other ways. 2. This moment seems to transform Peter. He is no longer the impulsive, misunderstanding Peter of the Gospels. Now he boldly speaks the good news and interprets Scripture, and he takes the lead in the new church. 3. This is seen as the birth of the church. The sermon by Peter is followed by a massive response, and the small group of disciples grows exponentially into a new movement, as 3,000 people were baptized and added to the church.

Acts 3-4: Echoes of Jesus I: Miracles & Opposition (see also 5:12-42) In Acts we see the disciples of Jesus picking up where Jesus left off. In the Gospels, Jesus sends out his disciples in a trial run, but they struggle to duplicate what Jesus is doing. But in Acts, we see the disciples carrying on the ministry of Jesus, continuing his miracles and message. But if they are truly following in the footsteps of Jesus, then we shouldn’t be surprised that they also continue to stir up opposition, especially by the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem. (After all, these are the same priests and that tried to end the influence of Jesus by crucifying him. They are certainly going to oppose his followers who persist in the same message, especially around the Jewish temple.) Here we see the beginning of certain themes that will recur throughout the book of Acts: 1. Arrest and imprisonment: arrest leads to miraculous prison breaks, or lack thereof 2. Testimony before leaders: arrests just give the apostles the opportunity to preach before leaders and authorities, as well as giving testimony to the people in the prison with them (this fulfills what Jesus said in the Gospel of Luke about them testifying before rulers and the Spirit giving them the words to speak; see Luke 21:1-15); along with this, there is the theme of being witnesses to Jesus, who are compelled to speak But see also part 2 of this theme below, with Stephen

Acts 4:32–37: Traits of the Early Church (see also 2:41-47; 6:1-7) 5

What are some of the things we learn about the first generation of the church, from this passage and other parts of Acts? shared goods in common healing, miracles conflict between Palestinian Jews and Hellenistic Jews baptized accepted persecution cared for widows and assigned deacons worshiped and taught in the temple and the synagogue sent out missionaries were based on Jerusalem but quickly spread out to other places, such as Antioch and Minor breaking bread together, worship, prayer

Especially in the first half of Acts, you get these descriptions of what the first church was like, how they lived and worshiped, and how they began to develop leadership and structure

Acts 6-7: Echoes of Jesus II: Martyrdom We’ve already seen that the apostles and early Christians are facing opposition, but God often miraculously intervenes and delivers them to continue their ministry. However, if the apostles are truly carrying on the ministry of Jesus, we should expect that some of them will follow him all the way to death, as he foretold would happen. In the story of Stephen, there are two main things we see: 1. Like other figures in Acts, Stephen lays out the history of Israel to show how Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures but also how the Jewish leaders have rejected Jesus (which will open up the way for the Gentiles). 2. The death of Stephen intentionally has echoes of the death of Jesus, showing the direct connection between the death of Jesus and the martyrdom (and reward) of his followers. At the end of Stephen’s story is also a name drop, which amounts to little more than a footnote at this point, but it will have major significance later: Oh, by the way, someone named Saul was there and guarded their coats.

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